Smartphone Apps For Those Living With Parkinson’s Disease
September 15, 2017, by
Digital platforms are now used for an array of healthcare purposes. Electronic medical records software, for example, enables physicians to better manage patient health information, while medical billing software helps administrators with the financial side of the process. Meanwhile, technologies such as pedometers, patient portals and smartphone or tablet apps empower patients to take greater control over the management of their own health. Apps, in particular, now address a range of concerns, from healthy eating to exercise. There are also many apps that focus on the management of chronic conditions, including heart disease, cancer and depression.
Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative illness impacting the nervous system, is another condition that is addressed via a range of smartphone apps. Here, we’ll provide a breakdown of some of the most effective Parkinson’s apps currently available.
A closer look at Parkinson’s diseaseA condition that progresses and worsens over a period of many years, Parkinson’s disease affects the central nervous system, and is characterized by symptoms such as stiffness, problems with movement and tremors, the Mayo Clinic detailed. There is currently no cure for Parkinson’s, although patients are able to take medications to manage symptoms and improve daily life.
Find Out More About Our Apps And Devices Library
All queries received regarding support for devices/apps/living aids should be sent via one of the following routes:
- Developers of devices, apps and living aids who want support on concept, design and development, testing and validation, product review and dissemination of information, or companies who want their product to be reviewed for our ‘safe to suggest’ list or ‘Excellence Network Resources’ list should contact Parkinson’s UK via our dedicated inbox . This inbox is managed by our digital strategist.
- For any device, app or living aid which is on the pathway to registration as a medical device it is likely that the request for support will be allocated to the Parkinson’s UK Research Support team. More information can be found in the Research Support Policy.
- Queries regarding sale of a consumer ready product in our online shop, or demonstration of a product at a Parkinson’s UK local group, should be directed to our product manager.
Each request for support is reviewed by the Parkinson’s UK devices, apps and living aids team. For requests regarding Parkinson’s UK support for use of a marketed product we may recommend referral to our external quality assessment partner. This is to ensure it meets our required standards before offering in-house support for evaluation by people living with Parkinson’s.
A single point of contact within the charity will be provided to the developer or company marketing a product so that there is continuity in communication.
Take Your Parkinsons Medications On Time
To ensure your Parkinsons medication like Sinemet or Levodopa are effective, its important to take them regularly and on time. MyTherapys medication reminder supports you by providing a highly customizable scheduler for your reminders it even allows you to select different times on weekends. Now you will always take your Parkinsons medication on time without the worry of it ever slipping your mind.
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Apps And Devices Library
We’ve worked with Our Mobile Health and a panel of people living with Parkinson’s to create a list of the best and most useful apps and devices on the market. Our Mobile Health are experts in identifying and reviewing trustworthy, relevant and engaging mobile health apps.
Everything in the library has been reviewed by people with the condition. This means we only include apps and devices that our panel:
- found genuinely useful
Resources For Managing Parkinsons Disease
Upon being diagnosed with a chronic and progressive condition, such as Parkinsons disease, you will have to adjust to a new life. Suddenly, you will have a complex treatment plan to follow and you will have to pay attention to your every symptom. Moreover, you will have difficulties keeping track of everything, as the condition can lead to memory problems.
You can rely on CareClinic as the app for tracking Parkinsons disease. It will help you adhere to your medication plan and other treatments, thus maintaining the best possible state of health.
The smartphone health app is meant to help one live a good quality of life and find the motivation to go on. Constantly developed in accordance with the feedback provided by those who suffer from this condition, the application serves as a practical tool for everyday life.
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How Technology Can Help People With Parkinsons Live Life To The Fullest
Advancements in technology have made our lives better and easier in so many ways. Just think about GPS, online shopping, and the fact that we can make phone calls, send emails, search the internet, and take amazing photos all from a device that fits in our pocket.
Did you know that technology can also help people with Parkinsons disease live better every day? Here are three easy ways technology can make a real difference for the PD community:
Smartphone Apps For Those Living With Parkinsons
If you are like most people, you are probably on your smartphone for a good portion of the day! Why not put the time spent on your devices to good use and manage your symptoms of Parkinsons disease and help elevate your lifestyle!
There is a wealth of smartphone/tablet apps that allow those who have Parkinsons Disease to help relieve them of stress, to help with certain exercises, to help with voice control and much more! There are so many apps to choose from, but here we have our top 5 smartphone apps for those living with Parkinsons disease.
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Health App Simple And Easy To Use
Our app allows those who have been diagnosed with Parkinsons disease to keep their condition in check. As the application has a simple interface, it is easy to use, regardless of ones age or knowledge of health apps. Patients can tailor the application to their specific needs and take advantage of its various features, such as the self-care plan, health diary, and symptom tracker.
You can use CareClinic to get a better understanding of your treatment plan and ensure that necessary medication adherence. As you will be given constant reminders to take your pills, you will find it easier to stick to treatment and avoid the off periods, which might make your manifestations worse. The health app is essential for the effective management of your treatment plan, and also for keeping your symptoms under control.
If you are looking for additional features, keep in mind that you can add information about your current diet and make sure you are eating only nutritious, healthy meals. You can also add exercise goals, information on levels of physical activity and even keep a sleep diary. With this health app, you will find it easier to manage every aspect related to your life with Parkinsons disease.
Clinical Impact Of Therapy Change
Thirteen out of the fourteen participants who successfully used the hardware returned for the follow-up clinician visit, while one was unable to return due to COVID-19 travel difficulties. The clinician reviewed the KinesiaU reports with each participant and made a therapy recommendation based on the reports and his clinical judgment . For example, participant 10s tremor was helped by the additional medication as demonstrated by the KinesiaU reports, which allowed the clinician to persuade the patient to continue with a higher dose of medication. The clinician determined eight participants demonstrated improvements from their therapy and were instructed to continue, while five participants were instructed to discontinue the new therapy. There were no specific trends regarding specific therapies found relating to the demographics of the participants with different symptoms and medical histories but the efficacy of the wearable system for quantifying these varied participants demonstrates the utility of this monitoring system across symptoms, disease state, and therapies used.
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How Are You Tracking
Better symptom monitoring at your fingertips
The more specific you can be with your health care team about the types of PD symptoms youre experiencing, the better your doctor can tailor your treatment plan specifically to you.
But it can be hard to remember how certain symptoms have or have not affected you since the last time you connected with your health care team. Thats why APDA developed a new mobile phone app that makes it really easy to keep track of your symptoms frequently and more accurately, and share that information with the people who are treating you.
Questions for you
The APDA Symptom Tracker app guides you through a simple set of questions that has you rate how certain motor symptoms and non-motor symptoms are affecting you. It then creates a simple graph to indicate which symptoms are most impacting your quality of life.
You can save this graph in the My Library section of the app, and also email to members of your health care team. Over time, you can compare your results to see if certain symptoms are getting worse, and determine which symptoms need to be addressed more urgently than others.
Questions for the Doctor
The app also features a useful list of resources that connects you directly to a wealth of quality, credible PD information.
The APDA Symptom Tracker can help you have more meaningful conversations with your healthcare team and better manage your disease. Download the free app from the Apple App Store or Google Play today!
An App For Staying On Schedule With Parkinsons Medications
A smartphone app helped people with Parkinsons disease to take medications on time and track symptoms, according to a recent clinical trial. The study appears in the January 9 online edition of npj Parkinsons Disease.
As PD progresses, the medication regimen for most people becomes complicated, with different PD medications taken several times a day, alongside drugs for other illnesses such as heart disease. Its very important that these medications be taken on time. It has been thought that smart phone applications that record symptoms might help people with PD to keep track of medications, while helping their doctors to better understand their symptoms.
Researchers led by Adrian Williams, M.D., at University Hospitals, Birmingham, UK, tested a smartphone app designed by uMotif Ltd., to help people with PD keep track of medications and symptoms. Its featured reminders to take medications an interface to record sleep, exercise, mood, energy and ease of movement games to gauge physical responsiveness and cognition and information about PD.
The study included 158 participants in England and Scotland who averaged 61 years of age and had lived with PD for four years. Among the participants, 68 received the app, and 90 continued their usual routines without the app. All participants visited the clinic at the beginning of the study to fill out questionnaires about aspects of their PD, and again 16 weeks later.
Results
What Does It Mean?
Reference
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Icipant Approval Of The System
All 16 participants, including those who experienced technical difficulties, completed the patient survey. A representative selection of questions and participant responses are presented in Table 2. Most users who completed the survey found the system easy to use and the tasks easy to perform but the perceived utility of the reports varied. Review of survey responses and KinesiaU usage for participants who completed the study revealed some trends. Participants who reported viewing the reports more often and found them to be more useful were often those who performed more recordings per day. Specifically, the more recordings per day on an average a participant performed, the more they agreed with the statement The KinesiaU reports made me more aware of changes in my symptoms .
Table 2.
Participant responses to selected questions from the end-of-study survey
Symptoms Of Parkinson’s Disease Vary From Person To Person Tracking Parkinsons Disease Symptoms With Mobile Apps Can Document Their Progression
As many as one million people in the U.S. live with Parkinson’s disease, and about 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with this movement disorder each year, according to the Parkinsons Disease Foundation. Although its chronic and progressive, Parkinson’s disease affects people differently. For some, it progresses quickly while, for others, Parkinsons may impact only one side of the body or symptoms may worsen very slowly.
Tremors are often the primary symptom of Parkinsons disease. So its understandable patients can be concerned when tremors seem to be increasing and they may also want to know if their symptoms are calming down due to medication or if a lifestyle change is helping. Now, thanks to smartphones and other smart devices, apps can help patients answer these questions by tracking Parkinsons disease symptoms.
For example, Parkinsons patients can easily record their medications and keep a log of symptoms with the Parkinsons Diary app, designed for iPhone and iPad. And an app developed by Birbeck, University of London, researchers is designed to measure in four minutes or less whether Parkinsons disease symptoms are increasing or decreasing.
The goal of the cloudUPDRS system app is to allow the patient to track his or her Parkinsons disease by recording specific measurements of symptoms.
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Study: App Accurately Tracks Parkinson’s Disease Symptoms
Capturing a patients experience outside the doctors office has been an ongoing struggle when it comes to treating Parkinsons disease. But now a new smartphone app can now detect the severity of symptoms in patients with Parkinsons disease remotely, according to a recent study published by JAMA.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Rochester Medical Center and Aston University have collaborated created an app, called HopkinsPD, that is able to generate an objective severity score Parkinsons symptoms, which strongly correlates to current standard rating scales.
“If you think about it, it sounds crazy, Dr. Ray Dorsey, co-author and neurologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said in a statement, but until these types of studies, we had very limited data on how these people function on Saturdays and Sundays because patients don’t come to the clinic on Saturdays or Sundays. We also had very limited data about how people with Parkinson’s do at two o’clock in the morning or 11 o’clock at night because, unless they’re hospitalized, they’re generally not being seen in clinics at those times.”
Researchers also found that the mobile Parkinsons disease score improved by 16.3 points in response to dopaminergic therapy.
The Improved Apda Symptom Tracker App 20 Boasts The Following New Features:
- An interactive medication tracker where you can enter the specific medications/doses and the time of day you take them which helps identify opportunities for better symptom management
- Helpful notifications and reminders including:
- reminders to enter symptom data into the app
- push notifications about helpful education programs and updates on treatments
- reminders to share information with the clinician prior to appointments
These newly-added features are important because everyone experiences PD differently, and symptoms can vary greatly day by day. The more specific someone can be with their health care team about the types of symptoms theyre experiencing, and the timing of their medication, the better the doctor can tailor a treatment plan specifically for each person. But it can be hard for people to remember how certain symptoms have or have not affected them since the last time they connected with their health care team, or if they missed a medication dose.
About the American Parkinson Disease Association:
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Apda Releases Updated Symptom Tracker App
The American Parkinson Disease Association launches a new and improved APDA Symptom Tracker App 2.0 a mobile application for people living with Parkinsons disease .
The updated version, which remains free of charge, features enhanced functionality that aims to significantly improve the ability of a person with Parkinsons disease to easily and accurately track their PD symptoms and medications, and relay that important information to members of their medical team. A Spanish-language version of the app is now available as well.
The app guides people through a simple set of questions that has them rate how certain motor symptoms and non-motor symptoms are affecting them. It then creates a graph indicating which symptoms are most impacting their quality of life in which can be saved in the My Library section of the app, and can also be emailed directly to members of their health care team, right from the app. Over time, people can compare the results to see if certain symptoms are getting worse, and determine which symptoms need to be addressed more urgently than others.
Clinical And Participant Use
Participants were provided a smartphone and smartwatch with the KinesiaU app installed to use over the course of 5 weeks. The app instructs the participant to perform 2 brief motor tasks while wearing the smartwatch on the more affected side. The smartwatch records the motion data, which are then automatically scored for tremor, slowness, and dyskinesia on a 04 scale using previously validated algorithms shown to be highly correlated with clinical ratings and responsive to therapy changes . Medication and exercise events can be recorded for tracking in graphical reports.
Fig. 1.
Sample reports as seen on smartphone demonstrating slowness scores within a day and average tremor scores over 5 weeks . Event markers below a given timepoint indicate the user recorded taking medication during that time.
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The Best Iphone Apps For Parkinson’s Disease
Check out our list of the best Parkinson apps for the iPhone, If you’re like most people, you’re probably on your iPhone a lot. Why not put it to good use and have it help manage your lifestyle and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease? There are medicine trackers, puzzles, social media sites, reminder apps, speech aids, symptom trackers, and information apps, all of which can be useful to those with Parkinson’s or their caregivers.
Parkinsons disease app is designed with and for people with Parkinsons who strive to live fully. For those participating in clinical studies we integrate with the Health app to read and collect your data to help your clinical study researchers better understand your disease state. So, download StrivePD app to know what to do to live well with this disease.
- Strive to live well with Parkinsons disease
- Track what makes you feel better or worse
- Newer miss a medication
MyParkinsonsTeam is a social network and support group for those living with Parkinson’s. Get the emotional support, practical tips to manage your life with Parkinson’s, and insights about treatment or therapies. MyParkinsonsTeam is the only social network where you can truly connect, make real friendships, and share daily ups and downs in a judgment-free place.
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